We Will Be Fine

Rowan Lyster's debut poetry pamphlet We Will Be Fine is full of wistful yearning and eerie surrealism. With an arch, ironic tone that belies the precision of its imagery, this pamphlet lampoons the fallacy of the picture perfect relationship. Expect magic, burnt dinners and naked mole rats, just don't hold out for happily-ever-after.

Spiky, and as ominous as snow in June, We Will Be Fine is full of wistful yearning and eerie surrealism. With an arch, ironic tone that belies the precision of its imagery, this pamphlet lampoons the fallacy of the picture perfect relationship. The seemingly romantic and domestic is rendered silly, Sisyphean and downright absurd.  But amongst the fatalist cynicism and dark humour are, I promise, sublime moments of fleeting tenderness. Expect magic, flying, burnt dinners and naked mole rats, just don't hold out for happily-ever-after. "In We Will Be Fine, the everyday takes on a fabulously surreal sheen: we are led into a world in which ant societies and naked mole-rats reveal unsettling truths about romantic relationships; a world in which ‘grass creaks’ and a flower can be grown from a buried stone. Throughout, Lyster deftly reflects on poignant moments of human connection — two people sheltering in a church porch, a choir of women breathing in unison — moments when barely suppressed fears and longings rise to the surface. With her signature wit and deliciously deadpan delivery, Lyster immerses us in the bizarre beauty and messiness of being alive." Natalie Linh Bolderston"The title may be ironic, but the poems are as earnest as they are uncertain, offering a perceptive view of the world and its entanglements. Resolution hinges on connection (‘I decided to give you back the horse, inside out, so you could see its beauty all the time’) as much as it does scepticism (‘I suspect the trees / aren’t real’). The poems are contemplative and precise, honest and hopeful: full of unique metaphors rooted in the mundane and the domestic, and venturing out into the world only to deconstruct it in this searching and skilful debut." Isabelle Baafi"The everyday anguish of being human is made magical here, as an extraordinarily vivid internal landscape is laid out before us. The poems in We Will Be Fine are funny, original, fresh, slightly scary, knowing at the same time as moving, strange and surprising. All of that, and all at once." Mark Waldron"Rowan Lyster's poems capture the shape of hands almost touching. In Lyster's word-world, moments of connection and severance come together with painful accuracy. The interior life of the human is revealed to be no different to that of the naked mole-rat, but in being picked up and weighed – which is to say, held – it becomes glowingly present again." Will Harris